Even Beyond Trumpcare, Trump Admin Making It Easier For Nursing Homes To Abuse Or Kill

While Senate Republicans continue to work in secret to find a way to pass the BCRA and cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, they are also working hard to make sure that, even if Medicaid survives, the health care system will be able to more easily rip you off or kill you without paying any price.

Kevin Drum points us to an article by Nicholas Bagley at the Incidental Economist that reports that the Trump administration is reversing an Obama policy that required nursing homes to abandon the use of mandatory arbitration in order to participate in Medicare or Medicaid. According to the Trump administration, “Upon reconsideration, we believe that arbitration agreements are, in fact, advantageous to both providers and beneficiaries because they allow for the expeditious resolution of claims without the costs and expense of litigation.”

Of course, without the threat of real litigation, nursing homes will likely provide worse care and become more deadly. If you want an example of how bad things can get, take a look at this article in the NY Times today that describes how bad nursing homes continually revert back to neglectful and dangerous behavior even after being under prolonged scrutiny under a designation called “special focus facility” that threatens the homes’ eligibility under Medicare and Medicaid. According to the article, “Of 528 nursing homes that graduated from special focus status before 2014 and are still operating, slightly more than half — 52 percent — have since harmed patients or put patients in serious jeopardy within the past three years.”

The fact is that these numbers probably vastly underestimate the serious problems at certain nursing homes where patients are being abused, given improper dosages or medications entirely, and even evicted from the facility to make room for new patients with a more profitable insurance policy for the home. The number of special focus facilities has actually declined by almost half since 2012. Unfortunately, rather than indicating that care at nursing homes has improved, it reflects virtually the opposite as the reason for the decline is solely due to federal budget cuts. According to the Times, “This year, the $2.6 million budget allows only 88 nursing homes to receive the designation, though regulators identified 435 as warranting scrutiny.”

So, Republicans are working hard to gut Medicaid making it even harder for middle class families to get Mom or Dad into a good facility without bankrupting themselves. And, even if they don’t manage to pass the BCRA, the Trump administration is making it easier for nursing homes to abuse or kill Mom and Dad, if they are lucky enough to get into one, and avoid responsibility for it by forcing you into arbitration. And, as with all mandatory arbitration clauses, it is yet another example of businesses forcing you to forego your legal rights in order to obtain services they provide. And they call this capitalism.